How can we believe anything we see anymore? With today's technology, we can literally do anything we want with images.

In the example see above, we have changed the red color of M8, the Lagoon Nebula, whose main spectral emission lies in the red portion of the spectrum, to blue with a simple adjustment in Photoshop.

When photography was first invented, its overwhelming power came from the fact that it recorded nature more realistically than any other art form had ever done before. Because of this, people trusted it and believed it portrayed "reality" and "truth".

But, just as story telling could portray the "truth" with an accurate accounting of the facts, it could just as easily become fiction. Fake and manipulated photographs - visual fiction - began circulating not long after the invention of photography.

With the invention of motion pictures, and certainly television, the public came to know that not every picture they saw was necessarily factual in its depiction of reality.

Historical Image Manipulation

Many people think that the manipulation of images started with the invention of Photoshop, but there have been fake photographs since the invention of photography.

A "Fairy" photograph from 1917 from Cottingley, England by Elise Wright and Frances Griffiths.

Daquilla Family Photograph by A. Werner and Sons.

In 1917, Elise Wright, age 16, and her cousin Frances Griffiths, age 10, used a simple camera to produce what they claimed were photographs of fairies in their garden in Cottingley, England (above).

Arthur Conon Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, believed these photos to be real, and wrote pamphlets attesting to their truthfulness. Even today some people believe these photographs are real.

At about the same time, photographic composites of different images were created by commercial photographic studios to bring family members together into one picture when they were not together in reality for the portrait session (right).

Notice that the three people on the left in the image appear to be floating in mid air in this photographic portrait of the Daquilla family from the early 20th century by A. Werner and Sons in New York.

They were apparently cut out of other photos and pasted on top of a photo of the woman at right and re-photographed in a composite image.

Ethics and Aesthetics

When we correct, manipulate and enhance images in Photoshop, we must deal with questions of both ethics and aesthetics. This discussion is not only limited to digital manipulation, but also includes conventional darkroom methods.

Ethics are a set of rules that we invent that define what we think is good and bad. The dictionary says ethics are "a set of moral principles or values" and that ethical means "conforming to accepted professional standards of conduct".

Aesthetics, on the other hand, deal with the nature of beauty, art and taste, and things that are pleasing in appearance.

With digital processing, there is almost no limit to what can be done to an image, and many things are done to images with the best intentions. The question is, when does the pursuit of aesthetics violate our ethics?

Changes can be made to images that are undetectable, so much so that there is now discussion that photographs will no longer be allowed as evidence in courts of law.

Today's viewers however, are very sophisticated visually. They know full well that anything, literally, can be done to an image. They have seen dinosaurs and aliens portrayed with lifelike realism in the movies. Problems arise though because viewers expect to be fooled in the movies, and tend to get upset and feel betrayed when they are fooled in an allegedly factual medium such as the news business.

In this discussion, there will be no simple black and white answers, everything will fall along a continuum and it is humans who decide the rules for what is considered ethical behavior and these rules can and do change over time.

The Myths of Objective Reality and Absolute Truth

The fundamental fact that we usually forget is that when we take a picture we do not make a perfectly objective recording of reality. What we make is an interpretation of reality.

Another problem in the "accurate" recording of nature is inherent in the choice of technology used by a photographer. Do you prefer Kodachrome of Velvia color film? Take your pick. Which particular Canon digital picture style do you like: Standard, Portrait, Landscape, Neutral, Faithful, or Monochrome? Which is a "true" recording of nature? None of these are. Each is an interpretation of nature. There is no film or digital camera that perfectly and accurately records nature even on this simple level.

It is also a fact that color is created in the mind of the observer. It is not a physical property of objects in the world, just as pain is not a physical property of the baseball that hits you in the eye.

Another way that still photography departs from reality is that it "freezes" time. We experience reality as a continuous stream while we are conscious. Motion video mimics this, but traditional still photography does not.

Interpretations

Photographers interpret what they see in a myriad of ways. The choice of lens by focal length and working f/stop alter spatial relationships between objects in the frame. The choice of location and focal length changes the very content of the picture. The choice of when to trip the shutter freezes a particular moment in a fluid and continuously changing time stream.

The real world is not recorded with strict objectivity in photographs because they are taken by human photographers who exercise editorial judgments in the taking of the photo, which includes the personal preferences, aesthetics, prejudices, intentions and philosophies of the photographer who takes the image.

Ethical Limits

How much is too much, how far is too far?

It depends on what you are trying to do. I am trying to share the beauty and wonder of the universe with others through my astrophotography. The question is more one of aesthetics than ethics for me because I am not formally trying to produce science with my images. My images do have documentary aspects however, so ethical considerations do come into play.

It's simple to me. The special qualities of long-exposure astrophotography allow the recording of objects and details that are mostly invisible to normal human vision. It is really out there in nature, we just can't see it. Some of this detail is incredibly faint and low contrast. If I enhance this faint detail in the original image to make it more visible, or more aesthetically appealing, that is ethically acceptable to me.

If you add something that wasn't there in the original scene, you've crossed the line from a documentary art form into a fictional one. This may or may not be OK, depending on what your purpose is. If your purpose is to portray a scene as truthful, then it's not OK. If your purpose was to create fiction, or "art", then it is OK. You just have to be up front and tell the viewer what you are doing in either case.

This position is, however, an opinion, and a completely subjective value judgment on my part. Like all ethical judgments, it can be unique and different for each individual.

Moon Composite

As for changing the contents of an image, personally I don't think much of the practice. For example, consider an image that shows a double exposure of a gigantic moon or an eclipse shot with a telephoto lens and a foreground scene that was shot with a wide angle. It's fake. I know it immediately when I look at it. A scene like that can't exist in nature. It doesn't do anything for me. I also know how difficult it is to take a photo of the real thing, and personally I place a tremendous amount of value on knowing an image is an attempt at being accurate.

However, other people might find a big moon in a wide-angle scene interesting and really enjoy it. On several occasions I have seen both photographically knowledgeable people, as well as the general public, get really excited over such an image. In my opinion, as long as the artist does not try to misrepresent what they are doing and methods are completely explained in the caption, it is an aesthetic judgment as to their success or failure.

I think the acceptance and popularity of images like this are mostly due to the proclivities of the viewer - they would rather be entertained and don't care that much that they were fooled. In fact, many people take great delight in being fooled, for example, at magic shows.

Most people who willingly suspend disbelief do so only in the context of entertainment and fiction. Although you could argue that others, such as those who really believe in things such as ghosts and fairies, have different, lower, standards of credulity than most rational, scientifically inclined people.

What most people get justifiably upset at is when someone intentionally lies and presents something as truthful when it is not.

Exceptions

In some situations it would be unethical not to digitally alter the content of a photograph, such as when a photo definitely records something incorrectly, such as red eye. The red eye would never have been there if we didn't change the original scene by adding the flash.

Another example would be correcting the green cast of an image shot under fluorescent lights on daylight film. Our eyes adapt to the green color of the light and we see it as normal in the scene, but the daylight film actually records it accurately as green. You would have a hard time getting most people to accept that the green is more "truthful".

Blue Moon Composite

In other cases, the only way to present a truer representation of reality is through a composite rather than with a single exposure.

For instance this photograph of the moon over the Philadelphia skyline is a fairly accurate representation of the scene as it really appeared to the eye.

However, there was no way to take this image in a single exposure because of the difference in brightness between the full moon and the foreground - some 14 stops difference.

Two exposures were made, one correct for the moon, and one correct for the foreground. They were then composited together in Photoshop. The moon is in the exact location it was when the photo was taken, and both photos were made with the same focal length lens.

The result was more true to the reality of the scene and the way it really looked than a single exposure could have captured. In this case the only way to faithfully represent the original scene was through some Photoshop "trickery". Was this truthful and ethical? I believe so and the procedure was fully explained in the caption.

Now, if I had moved the moon to make it better in composition, would I have crossed the ethical line if I presented this as a documentary photo? Yes, I think so.

Purposes and intentions

The important questions when we manipulate an image are, why are we doing this, and what are our purposes and intentions? Where do we draw the line? What is ethical in the digital manipulation and enhancement of a photo?

To answer these questions we must consider why we took the picture and what we are going to do with it. If the picture is taken for artistic purposes only, then pretty much anything goes because only aesthetic considerations come into play. If the photo was taken for documentary or journalistic reasons, then another set of ethical considerations come into play that have been developed by the photographer and the viewers of the image.

Some people say that I go too far in the digital enhancement of my astrophotos, and that the colors in some of my images are over-exaggerated and garish. And that opinion is OK with me. However, it is my job as an artist to present my interpretation of reality, and it is their job as viewers to accept it and get something out of it, or not, and reject it.

As a journalist in my sports photography, my job and responsibility are to faithfully and truthfully interpret and represent reality in an image as well as I can understand it.

Do The Tools Make A Difference?

We start out with nature. We can only observe it intimately with our own senses. Some might argue that a perfect experience can only be a first person experience. But if we find something interesting or beautiful, we may want to share something of that experience with others.

If others are not there with us to view the original scene personally, we can only share our own interpretation of the original experience. And we can only share this experience through some other media than reality. It may be verbal, through an oral story that tells of what we experienced, or it may be written down in words. It may be through some technology such as a simple drawing with pencil and paper, or a more complex technology such as film, CCD imaging or video.

The tool or technology does not really matter. Do you really care whether Hemingway wrote with a pen and paper or a typewriter? What matters is what the artist does with the tool or technology. Is he true to the subject and reality as he sees it?

Is it the tool, or the user of the tool, that the viewer trusts? The viewer must trust the creator of the work. The artist's credibility is the only commodity of value that he has to exchange with the viewer for their trust.

The Bottom Line

If an artist painted an entire picture from a photograph, would this be unethical? Only if he tried to misrepresent what it was and how he did it. If the creator was honest about exactly what was done, then the viewer could make his own judgment.

Personally I would not place as much value on a painting of a photographic scene, because you had to have the photo first, and getting the photo was the hard part. I would also not put much value on an photo where details were added that were not in the original image.

Of course, you could argue, completely legitimately, that the real beauty is out there in nature, in reality, and that any recording, or representation of that beauty in a photograph or painting is only a pale imitation of the real thing. This is undoubtedly true, to a very large degree. It is also true that a photograph or painting by a skilled artist can capture some of the spirit of beauty of the scene, and that artifact can transmit some of that nature to others.

Final Thoughts

Because of the ease in manipulating digital images with Photoshop, some people are questioning whether images are "real" or "art", and wondering if they can believe anything they see anymore. But people have been faking photos since the invention of photography - this is nothing new.

People have also been making things up since the invention of language. It's called fiction! And lots of people get a lot of enjoyment out of it. As long as the purpose of the "art" is not to intentionally mislead or misrepresent, and the artist is clear about his methods and intentions, no one gets fooled. Of course, there are some art forms, such as magic, where the intention is specifically to deceive, and the viewer willingly goes along with it.

It only becomes a problem, and a question of ethics, when the artist or photographer lies about his motivations, methods, and conclusions, and presents images with the purpose to intentionally deceive.

Through my astrophotograhy I can share with others the wonders and beauty of the universe that are sometimes invisible to the human eye. Digital enhancement can add to these aesthetic experiences.

What is important is our motivation. Why are we doing these things? Are we doing them to deceive people? No, most of us are not. We are doing it to make the subject more visually interesting. We are simply trying to make it a better picture. Just as a writer enhances his factual stories with metaphor and adjectives, photographers can enhance their images with digital techniques such as contrast and color enhancement.

Writers massage the language of words; photographers massage the language of light.

Want to learn more about DSLR astrophotography?

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